AN UNIVERSITY ASSIGNMENT

THAT BECAME A PUBLISHED BOOK

THE PROJECT

This was my degree-completion assignment, on the last year of my Graphic Design course at UEMG. It was one of those rare moments where you get to be your own boss, on every aspect of a project . I chose to build a book from the ground up – cover, logo, layout and illustrations. I even ended up translating the original text (more on that later). I picked up Alice in Wonderland as the story I was going to build on. My choice was a bit uninformed, based solely on a admiration I had for the characters and the general mood of this tale. But boy, is there more to it than just characters and mood! Turns out I was unaware (as almost everyone is, nowadays) of the huge amount of hidden puns, jokes and meanings of the original text, mostly because they only made sense back in the Victorian days. Those hidden meanings became the core of the whole project.

BEHIND ALICE

A little research was enough to blow my mind about so many facts regarding the story. It induced me to research further, which in turn led to more mind-blowing facts – and then I was going down a rabbit hole myself.

The character of Alice was based on a real girl – Alice Liddell, a child for whom the author had a very special friendship. In fact, he wrote the book as a present for her. It was initially called “Alice’s Adventures Underground”, and you can find images of its manuscript online. I based the aesthetics of some of my pages and dropcaps on his manuscript. There are also many photographs of the actual Alice, who wasn’t blond, nor had a light mien at all, unlike Disney’s. My illustrations of Alice were based on her real looks.

And she’s not the only real person disguised as a character. E.g. the Dodo bird, who represents the author himself. Carroll’s real name was Dogson. And since he stuttered frequently, it often came out of his own mouth as “Do-Dogson”, thus, the “Dodo”. In my version, the Dodo Bird has Carroll’s face.

The story is full of such easter-eggs, and I chose to work in a similar way, providing image easter-eggs for the text easter-eggs. Something like meta-easter-eggs, which suits just fine, since Carroll was a mathematician with strong fondness to meta-logic and symmetry. To further identify him as the Dodo, I drew it’s shadow with a human shape to it, and he wears the number 42 on his neck (that was Carroll’s favorite number).

SOME MORE META-EASTER-EGGS

The Cheshire Cat’s name comes from the Cheshire county, famous for it’s cheese. It is said the cheese was moulded in a grinning cat’s shape, back on the Victorian days. People would cut pieces out of the cheese so that the cat would slowly disappear, and tha’s why the character has the habit of disappearing in chunks. My Cheshire Cat has its insides made of cheese to represent that.

The Mad Hatter also has it’s name based on a Victorian tradition. It was a common expression to say that someone was “mad as a hatter”. This was because hatters used a lot of mercury when making felt hats, and many became mercury-poisoned, a condittion which often brought madness upon it’s bearer.

Likewise, the Mock Turtle also owns it’s name to an expression from the past. In the Victorian days, eating turtle soup was a common habit of the most wealthy layers of society. It was an expensive dish. Those who couldn’t afford it got by with “mock turtle soup”, a cheaper version, made with often-discarded parts of a catle calf, like the head and the hooves. Therefore, the illustrated creature has a calf’s head, and soup spoon legs.

TIPOGRAPHY AND AESTHETICS

A Victorian Times Inspired Layout

Aesthethics

The whole aesthethics was based on Victorian Era visuals. Those times are known for the indiscriminate use of ornaments. Objects, architecture and interiors often featured mixed and widely different styles . Trying to synthesize it, I saw the following constants: lots of geometric lines, lots of organic lines, and in both cases, lots of parallel lines. Illustrations also had lots of parallel lines, i.e. hatching and cross-hatching. This is the reason why I chose to draw Alice using hatching: she is a Victorian character, her essence is out of today’s time. Thus, she appears as an old, grimy drawing amidst an explosion of paint, watercolor, vectors and digital colors.

Dropcaps

The curvy and straight parallel lines – my way of representing the Victorian context – are all around in the book. There are always masses of flowing, colorful paralell lines. Even on the dropcaps I created to open each chapter, as seen above.

To the left: pages from the manuscript (in English, cursive writing) and a few from my book, inspired on it.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

Below is a fusion of several illustrations I did for the book. One can see the far-fetched style of Victorian furniture on the body of the Writing-desk-Crow, as well as the profusion of curves, which were about to become a staple in the forthcoming movement of Art Nouveau.

THE AMBIGRAM

The idea of an ambigram logo came from Lewis Carroll’s personality itself. Aside from being an author, was also a mathematician and inventor. Carroll apparently had a fascination for all things symetrical – despite the fact that his own face was not an example of symetry. His tales are filled with symetrical elements, e.g the Tweedledum e Tweedledee twins, or the fact that Alice goes through a mirror on the second tale, finding a kind of reverse-world there.

Above, on the left: you’ll never be able to tell which side is up! On the right: another tribute to Carroll’s playful nature. A small flipbook animation goes through the entire book. The hearts symbol appears for the first time exactly when the Queen’s chapter starts.

LAST WORDS

A NEW BOOK HATCHES (OR RATHER CROSS-HATCHES)

EPILOGUE

This project’s first incarnation was born as a prototype, printed in 2007, to be shown at the degree-completion assignment presentation. It won me a score of 100. Later on, working at an advertising agency in 2010, I conquered the patronage of my employer, who funded this book’s publishing, a simple but cool edition, on a small quantity. I still look forward to publish newer and better editions of it, though!

Above, a bit of making-of: Roughs were pencil-made, inking was technical pen and ballpoint, colors were watercolor and digital! Below: how the book turned out.

Entrevista sobre o livro

INTERVIEW ABOUT THE BOOK

concedida à Rede Minas, circa 2010

THANKS FOR READING. AND THANKS TO…

My wife, (girlfriend at that time!) for helping me translate the text, and my mother and aunt, for letting me use their house space for book storage. Also, I thank the design teacher who was my project advisor at the time, Thiago Colares, and 2Pontos Widebusiness for the first edition sponsorship.